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public/private sites, cross posting content – Blogging News Theme [Resolved]

  • Hi!

    Im a bit of a WP newbie but I am sick of Joomla so transferring my site over to something more straight forward for my users.

    Basically I am running a news/publishing site which has a public side, and a private side…

    The public side is the attractive site, where the content is produced and any user can view and potentially comment on the articles.

    There is also a private side for my authors to network with each other, earn points for the more posts and comments they make, integrate split advertising, activity streams, etc.

    What I would like to do is implement this with wordpress, potentially using buddypress for the social features.

    I am having a lot of problems with finding an attractive buddypress theme, so I am now using some themes for wordpress from Colorlabs.. I would still like to integrate buddypress though..

    I have tried integrating into the existing template, but I dont think the framework will allow it as it keeps throwing up errors..

    The solution I had thought of was using a Multisite install, with two separate sites (public + private).. This is possible with the one user, but it seems that it is still difficult to get the content posted on the private site, published correctly on the public site (particularly photos are not coming across with plugins such as broadcast, etc)..

    The other idea I had was to somehow have the two sites sharing the same tables in a database for comments, images, posts, etc… but I haven’t managed to find any links on the internet to successful implementations such as this..

    I know there are all sorts of issues with duplicating content across two sites, but the key here is that the private site will not be indexed…

    The final idea I have had was to allow my users to only be subscribers in the private side, and force them to publish on the public side (through the multisite, with an appropriate admin menu at the top) but to then have these posts broadcasted back to the social network (with the permalinks posting to public side, but the author links pointing to the social profiles in buddypress for the private side/logged in users). I won’t have the appropriate photos in the network, but this is not essential. I just want users in the network/private side to be able to see what others are posting, follow the links, add them as friends, and also critically, earn points for the content they post on the front end…

    Any suggestions as to how I can implement this, or any one else who has similar ambitions?

    Thanks!

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • There are some ways to get content copied from one site onto another, but I think they are all pretty clunky. Your content should be written and published on your user-facing site, and that’s where you’d be best to track things like blog posts.

    I’d have a careful think about if tracking your authors’ activity gives much value to the other users; after all, anyone can read the posts that are published in the actual website. You can create a second site
    (or multisite site), and have that site as the discussion area for your authors. Specifically, consider using the ‘P2 Theme’ on it, which you can find for download on WordPress.org.

    Thanks for the tips @Paul Gibbs

    The reason I want the two sites to be connected is so that my authors can network and get points, rankings, etc, for the posts they make (this was a feature requested by my users).

    The key thing for me is that my users want the social features that I can provide through buddypress, but it is difficult to integrate with more extensive framework based wordpress templates (at least it seems that way for me) so I would love to be able to have buddypress on the same site, or a connected site, that has its own template and is hidden from users.

    Also when I say authors it might sound misleading because this could be potentially 500-1000 different users so they need group and discussion forum features..


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    @jakeyboy1989 from your WP forums post as well – If you just want to make your WordPress theme compatible with BuddyPress, you don’t need to create a multisite installation.

    Install and activate the BP Template Pack Plugin and go through Appearance > BP Compatibility process. Then post back here if you require further assistance.

    @mercime Thanks again for your help.

    I tried this previously with another colorlabs template and it simply displayed =0 when I tried loading the page, however, using a different template now, it seems to work.. I just need to try and adjust the files to make it look a bit better.

    you can see what I have done here – http://www.jakewhitehead.com/socialbp/

    Just hoping this will do what I want.

    Can you hide some of these menus so only logged in users see them?

    @mercime I have gotten pretty far now

    you can see the site at = progressivetalks.com

    Im still having some issues getting the template to work though.. particularly I’m not sure how to define the right widget or in other words, decrease the width of the buddy press window

    see here for the buddypress component – http://progressivetalks.com/members/

    any possible suggestions?

    Thanks again for your assistance!


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    == Im still having some issues getting the template to work though. ==

    @jakeyboy1989 I can see by the source code that you’re using Blogging News by Colorlabs. To help you fix alignment and some styles: open up your Blogging News theme’s header.php, Copy all, Paste in pastebin.com, Click submit, Post generated URI here. Do the same for: index.php, page.php, sidebar.php and footer.php.

    Here are the 6 files @mercime including sidebar-footer.php. Thanks again for your help. Appreciate the tips. Its the header and footer that have gotten me quite lost…

    The other thing I was wondering.. is it possible to change the look of buddypress within the template.. For example, at the moment it looks like it takes its styling from the default bp template, but if I wanted to change it to reflect something closer to the Frisco for Buddypress theme, but instead Red, Black and White to suit my website, how would I go about this?

    Would it be a matter of copying the files from the new template over the default template files and then using a css sheet to redefine some values?

    Thanks again! Cant say how much I appreciate it!

    http://pastebin.com/ZANmErsf
    http://pastebin.com/XsS23sVk
    http://pastebin.com/Ft1Vnsgd
    http://pastebin.com/pt7LqvCv
    http://pastebin.com/nQPFB2NK
    http://pastebin.com/kTX2sVqX


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    == but if I wanted to change it to reflect something closer to the Frisco for Buddypress theme, but instead Red, Black and White to suit my website, how would I go about this? ==

    @jakeyboy1989 You could do that by using Firebug, Firefox add-on, and/or copying the styles of the BP elements from Frisco onto your current WP theme’s stylesheet. I suggest you do that after you implement the template changes I will post here later.

    So to continue with fixing the alignment of your BP template files, I need the content of your theme’s loop-page.php file in pastebin.com as well.

    @mercime Ive copied across loop, loop-page, loop-home and single

    Im not sure how much this impacts upon the buddypress format, but I am in the process of trying to get rid of the comments form out of these templates (loop, loop-page) as it is really ugly and I would prefer users commenting with Facebook, etc… still not 100% sure how i will do it, but reading up

    thanks again.

    http://pastebin.com/pcWjwxvD
    http://pastebin.com/zgLVQv3c
    http://pastebin.com/yCX8pGrk
    http://pastebin.com/kv9taL2j


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    @jakeyboy1989 Based on the HTML structure of your theme, you need to use the first option, i.e., change 16 template files within the 6 BP folders transferred to your bloggingnews theme folder in server during the compatibility process.

    If you’ve previously changed any of the BP template files in your theme folder, replace all of them for a clean slate by deleting the 6 BP folders in server – /activity, /blogs, /forums, /groups, /members, and /registration – then re-run Appearance > BP Compatibility.

    Download the 6 clean BP folders to your computer hard drive.

    A. At the top of each of those 16 template files I linked to above, replace
    `

    `

    with
    `

    `

    Then, in each of 16 files, you’d like to change the BP Templates’ page title’s header tag from `

    ` or `

    ..

    ` to `

    // Titles Of Respective BP Page Templates //

    `, just watch out when you do this in the /activity/index.php page.

    Save files.


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    B. At the bottom of the same 16 files, replace:
    `

    `

    with the following (except for registration/register.php):
    `

    `

    with the following for registration/register.php:
    `

    jQuery(document).ready( function() {
    if ( jQuery(‘div#blog-details’).length && !jQuery(‘div#blog-details’).hasClass(‘show’) )
    jQuery(‘div#blog-details’).toggle();
    jQuery( ‘input#signup_with_blog’ ).click( function() {
    jQuery(‘div#blog-details’).fadeOut().toggle();
    });
    });

    `

    Save files.

    C. Upload the 6 BP folders containing the 16 files you’ve just revised to your server wp-content/themes/bloggingnews/

    D. Check out the style modifications made in BP Twenty Ten for reference especially with removing the bullets and bringing in the extended width of the BP elements. https://codex.buddypress.org/theme-development/theme-dev-bp-template-pack-walkthrough-twenty-ten-bp-1-5/3/ and copy these over to your theme’s stylesheet and adjust as needed.

    @mercime Thanks again for the help!

    It’s looking tonnes better now.

    There is one issue that the widgets are still showing up in the main content instead of in the right sidebar – http://progressivetalks.com/activity

    is there something else I need to edit to get this working? I have the widget logic plugin so I can specify where I want widgets (there are some specific widgets I want in buddypress) but I must still need to define this sidebar in the buddypress pages or?

    Also, just in terms of the final step of styling.. Just to clarify, I should copy the code supplied in the template tutorial and then modify that? I need to learn CSS so I am going through it, but is this the step where I can copy some of the styling over from Frisco?

    Would it be a matter of just getting the styling from Frisco and copying into my style.css?

    @mercime

    I managed to fix the issue with the sidebar. I just had to move the call function for the sidebar outside the div tag and it seems to work now..

    Still trying to figure out what I need to do to change the CSS and only effect the buddypress part of the template though..


    @mercime
    Keymaster

    @mercime

    Did you copy the styles from Twenty Ten per link I posted in Instruction D. above?

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • The topic ‘public/private sites, cross posting content – Blogging News Theme [Resolved]’ is closed to new replies.
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